But there’s something that’s not right. There’s something in the water that shouldn’t be there. Not a deer, Lindman thinks.

The dog looks down, then barks desperately again.

There’s something yellow floating in the blackness, a vague, almost pulsating yellow circle in his gradually deteriorating vision.

‘Johansson, what’s that floating down there in the moat? That light-coloured thing? That the dog’s barking at.’

Johansson looks down at the water.

Like a black snake held captive by ancient stone banks. Is that old story about the Russian soldiers true? he wonders.

Some fifty metres away, on the surface of the moat, something pale, yellow, is moving slowly to and fro, a dark outline in the water, the shape, he recognises it instinctively, and wants to look away.

A head.

A body concealed yet still visible in the water.

Blond hair.

A face turned to one side.

A mouth.

He imagines he can see luminous fish, tiny sprats, swimming into the open mouth, a mouth that must long since have stopped gasping for air.

‘Fucking hell.’

‘Oh shit.’

‘Fucking hell,’ Johansson repeats, unclear about what to feel or do next, only knowing that he wants the dog to stop barking. That dog will be barking in his dreams until the end of time.

There’s something that’s no longer moving.

Something that’s stopped for ever. Instead whatever it is that’s surrounding me is moving. I don’t have to breathe to live here, just like it was long ago, where everything began and I floated and tumbled inside you, Mum, and everything was warm and dark and happy apart from the loud noises and rough jolts that shook my senses, the little senses I had then.

No warmth here.

But no cold either.

I can hear the dog. Howie. It must be you, I recognise your bark, even if it sounds like you’re so far away.

You sound anxious, almost scared, but what would a dog like you know about fear?

Mum, you taught me all about the fear to be found in pain. Am I closer to you now? It feels like it.

The water ought to be so cold, as cold as the heavy hail that’s been firing from the skies all autumn.

I try to turn around, so my face is looking up, but my body no longer exists, and I try to remember what brought me here, but all I can remember is you, Mum, how I rocked in time with you, just like in the water of this moat.

How long am I going to be here?

There’s a ruthlessness here, and I see myself reflected in that ruthlessness, it’s my face, my sharp, clean features, the nostrils whose flaring can scare people so, no matter who they are.

Pride.

Am I proud?

Is that time past now?

Now that everything’s still.

I can float here for a thousand years, in this cold water, and be master of this land, and that’s just fine.

The deer need to be culled.

The hares need to be eradicated.

People need to leave their warm, secure water.

New days need to be born.

And I shall be part of them all.

Own them all.

I shall lie here and see myself, the boy that I was.

And I shall do so even if I’m scared. I can admit it now; I’m afraid of that boy’s eyes, the way the light opens the world up to him, in jerks, like the desperate bark of an abandoned dog.

Linkoping and district, summer 1969

The world comes into being through the eyes, because if you close them there are no images, and the boy is four years old when he learns to recognise his own eyes, pebble-sized deep-sea-blue objects set at perfect distance from each other in an equally perfectly shaped skull. Jerry realises what he can do with those eyes, he can make them flash so that remarkable miracles happen, and, best of all, he can get the nursery-school teachers to give him what he wants.

His reality is still directly experienced. What does he know about the fact that on this very day, tons of agent orange and napalm are being dropped onto tropical forests where people hide in holes deep underground, waiting for the burning jelly to dig through the ground and destroy them?

For him, warm is simply warm, cold is cold, and the black-painted copper pipe attached to an endless, rough, red, wooden surface is so hot that it burns his fingers, albeit not in a dangerous way, but in a way that’s nice and makes him feel both safe and scared; scared because the warmth in him awakens a feeling that everything can end.

A lot happens in this life.

Cars drive. Trains travel. Boats on the Stangan River blow their whistles.

He lies on the grass in the garden of his grandmother’s cottage, feeling the dense smell of chlorophyll possess him, seeing how the grass colours his knees and body green. In the evenings, when the midges attack, Daddy puts a bright yellow plastic bathtub on the grass and the water is warm on his skin and the air around him is cold, and then he runs alongside the howling grass-scented monster that gives off a sharp smell and Daddy sweats as he pushes it across the grass. The blades sniff out the boy’s feet, spraying grass cuttings from its broad maw; this isn’t a game and Daddy sees the look in his eyes but doesn’t let that put him off. Daddy turns the monster, chasing the boy through the garden, crying: ‘Now I’m going to cut your feet off, now I’m going to cut your feet off’, and the boy runs down to the edge of the forest, feels like running until the lawnmower can no longer be heard.

But inside, in the kitchen with Mummy and Grandma, his eyes work and he realises it’s best to eat buns when they’re fresh, before the mould creeping up from the floor has a chance to make them taste spoiled.

Daddy comes home to the cottage after work.

With bags that clink. And then Mummy wants to sit still. She feels better after Daddy comes with the bags, Grandma too, and they are happy, but not properly happy.

The sun disappears and the heat in the black-painted copper is exchanged for a metallic smell in the chilly stairwell and multicoloured glass marbles rolling in the sand of a sandpit, and then down into a hole, and someone’s in the way, another boy.

Go away. You’re not supposed to be there. And Jerry’s hand flies up, strikes where he means it to, across the nose, and then the blood comes and the boy screams, the boy he’s hit screams out loud and he himself screams: ‘Plaster!’, not: ‘He hit me first.’ He regards himself as too good for a lie like that.

In the world of direct experience there is a dead cat in a rubbish bin by the swings in the park. He once gave that cat some cream.

There are feelings floating in the two rooms of the flat, there are questions directed at him. ‘Do you know that we live in Berga?’ ‘That Daddy works for Saab, putting together planes that can fly through the air faster than words?’ And he recognises the laughter, it lacks warmth, and they sit on the orange and brown patterned sofa, the one they make into his bed each night, and they pour out drinks from the bottles they always have in a bag. Then they talk louder, the air turns sweet and unpleasant, and they look at black-and-white people on a screen, and Mummy can get up in a way that she can’t otherwise, she can fly up from the sofa and they dance, she only does that when they’ve been drinking and he likes watching Mummy dance. But then Daddy starts chasing him, he’s the lawnmower trying to catch him and hit him on his arms and legs, and the boy is four years old, and creeps out of an unlocked front door, into the world outside that is full of life waiting to be conquered; a cat to be buried, a swing to be swung up to the sky, car and trains to be driven, people shouldn’t lie in vomit and pain, shouldn’t chase him anywhere.